I have seen the seals

I have returned from CA, where I had adventures. DP had invited me to join her and her parents on the coast for the weekend before Thanksgiving, then had to change her plans, leaving me alone in California for the first day of our trip. Rather than change my own plane ticket I decided I would just take a day to explore by myself. So I rented a car and drove out to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, from which you can see the famous bridge and the city of San Francisco as well.


This is the thing: San Francisco is a white city. Just that so many of the buildings have light-colored edifices. I don't know why. It is like a town on a hill in Greece or Yemen. Sometimes you go to a place not realizing you expected something different until you see that it's not what you didn't know you expected.

There is some high-caliber shipping traffic out there, which is fun to watch.

I stayed till after dark.

I had made very special sleeping arrangements. Two years ago a thing happened that I don't think I ever blogged about, which was that I was one of the year's lucky recipients of the Udall Scholarship for leadership in environmental studies. The Udall Foundation flies all the winners out to a resort in Tucson each year for a convention, at which a primary activity is networking, with each other, past winners, and policy-makers.

Me, on right, and the group I went camping with after the convention

Networking remains a primary activity for Udall alumni, who keep in touch through an online mailing list and other means. So it is through the Udall network that I met Bret, who offered me a bed in his student co-op at Berkeley.

In this large building near campus some 30 grad students were housed, and when I arrived they were all gathered in the dining room drinking and having so many conversations at such a decibel level that I can practically see the noise streaming out of this picture as I look at it now.

I stayed up too late talking with the students and of course it made me powerfully wish I was also a grad student at Berkeley, or at least a grad student, although I am sure in my wistfulness I am missing something important and non-romantic about being a grad student, possibly related to having to do work. But I enjoyed my stay there very much. The co-op was very interesting.

A room where people can give/get free stuff... click to read the labels on the boxes.

Physics Today.

Here is a sheet where people buy and sell their weekly chores.

The next morning I walked around Berkeley, which was very nice. My calling a place "very nice" usually means I liked the plant life and the architecture. The plants were weirdly lush and exotic to my East Coast eyes, and the architecture seemed to be mid-century, the sort of stuff that has character but not so much it makes you mumble, "What were they thinking back then?"

The bulletin boards on campus were a weird kind of art form. I don't know what exactly was going on here. Whoever was putting up any kind of flier seemed compelled to tile it across the face of the board at regular intervals, perhaps in the hope that if someone didn't want to read their flier, they might want to read the identical copy 2 inches over to the right. The effect was something like the intentional repetition of pattern in a sheet of wallpaper.

Then I went back to the airport to greet DP's arrival, and she showed me the house where she had grown up in Berkeley, which I couldn't really believe existed.

It had redwoods in the front yard, kiwi and lemon trees, and a view of the ocean, among other niceties. It was as if people had cobbled together all the nicest things you could have in a house and a yard, but which couldn't actually be together without causing a rift in the universe, or possibly exponentially expanding property values, but there they were. But soon we left there for the 3-hour drive up the coast to Sea Ranch, where we spent the next few days.

Sea Ranch is a planned community occupying a former ranch above the cliffs of the Northern CA coastline. It was very quiet.


The house we stayed in was very large, with many bedrooms, a fireplace and hot tub. It was very close to the beach.


DP and I went for walks along the shore, where we saw many things.

These are some kind of rotting Kelp Thing. For some reason, upon seeing them, the first thing out of DP's mouth was "We should fight with these!"

This was possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever done in my life. But there were also many other things to look at on the beach that were not rotting.

Sea anemones

A sea star

I have no idea what these are.

Here are some ichnofossils, probably burrows, lacing the rocks making up the cliffs over the beach.

A heron

Banana slug

The seals. When I saw the seals, I actually shrieked like a little girl. I have never done that before in my life, ever, not even as an actual little girl. I was so excited and happy. For four years I worked at an aquarium that had captive seals, and every day I would hear visitors talk about how you could see seals from the CT and RI coastline, but I never managed to see any wild ones. Ever. But now I have seen them.

All of the other things

My tenure at the park is over, but there remain a few photos of interesting things.


I don't have much to say about these, except for the rattlesnake. But I shall caption them.

A nighthawk.

A ponderosa pine. Ponderosa pines have a silhouette that is itself a classic icon of the west. They can be recognized by their rounded tops.

A damselfly. Damselflies are similar to dragonflies, but are slimmer, and fold their wings onto their backs when they rest.

The Yampa River after the big storm we had while rafting. The storm turned the waters reddish-brown beyond a certain point at which the reddish Phosphoria Formation, above the pale Weber Sandstone, was washing down the cliffs into the river. Here the water behind the sandbar is its original yellow color, the water beyond it more reddish, which color it remained for several hours.

Many ranches have posts over the entrance with various horses, cowboys, bulls, etc. upon them. This one near the park was a little more creative.

DP rides a captive brontosaurus.

A news item in Vernal.

The mineralogy book that my field partner found in the middle of nowhere, in a crevice in some rocks far from any trail. It had a name and a number. However, the number didn't have the right amount of digits to be a phone number. And I can't imagine why anyone would put their SSN in a mineralogy book.

Old juniper wood.

A flower. Obviously.

This cabin is on one of the county roads that allow access to the east end of the park. The sign reads: "$1,000 REWARD for information leading to the CONVICTION of anyone STEALING, MOLESTING or POACHING [illegible] or PROPERTY [illegible]."

My hat, and some scenery.

A worked point (i.e., Indian artifact) I found in the field.

My field partner at work.

A storm beyond the housing area.

Students and volunteers on the University of Utah team doing research in the park pause in trying to remember the Seven Dwarves to catch a Sharpie, here suspended in mid-flight.

DP in a slotty portion of what was generally a non-slot canyon.

Investigating the nicest track site we found. The prominent trackway stretching from foreground to background was made by a small mammal-like reptile walking up a dune 200 million years ago.

Not The Rattlesnake, but a rattlesnake we walked right past before realizing it was there, a foot from our feet.

Fantasy Canyon, south of the park.

Also Fantasy Canyon.

Sunset from Fantasy Canyon.

Flaming Gorge, north of the park.

Flaming Gorge Dam.

A sign below Flaming Gorge Dam that practically invites you to read it the wrong way.

There were many signs here.

Cross-bedding in sandstone.

The moon rises over Blue Mountain. As seen from the housing area.

Some trees on the Ruple Point Trail.

A picture of me at Moonstone Arch outside the park, taken by a co-worker.

And me hiking back from a day of field work.

And me in front of the wall of bones at the visitor's center that will reopen this October.

I scale the stegosaurus model outside my office. For no good reason.

Also for no good reason.

Oh, yes, back to the beginning of the summer, when I was trying to get the frisbee off the roof with a grappling hook made of two pairs of salad tongs.

We take the pledge to become Junior Paleontologists.

Our album cover. Actually, this is the team I worked with for part of the summer.

Second album cover.

Third album cover. Obviously, this is after we fired our drummer.

My goofy field partner Keegan at the wall of bone.

We pose in some shots for my supervisor's blog.

I look up at the reverse image of some footprints.

Our evil supervisor watches over us as we slave to dust off a fossil trackway.

Me and femur.

Now, The Rattlesnake. My field partner and I were hiking through a wash on our way back from a hard day of field work when he told me I just stepped on something. I looked around. This is what I had just stepped on.

It was a baby midget faded rattlesnake eating a lizard. The rattlesnake did not do anything; it just sat there.

We watched it for a bit.

"It can't bite us," I said. "It has a giant lizard stuffed in its mouth. We can touch it. This could be the only time we're ever able to touch a rattlesnake."

I touched it. It sat there. After several minutes of gathering up his courage, my field partner touched it, wincingly.

Immediately after he withdrew his hand, the rattlesnake spat the lizard out with lightning speed and slithered away, keeping its head turned to watch us, shaking its not-quite-a-rattle-yet tail, to coil in some grass a couple feet away.

Okay, so it totally could have bitten us. One of the stupider things I've ever done. Still, we survived!